'No Child Left Behind' standards unreasonable

August 26, 2004

America's Education Secretary Rod Paige said a very curious thing the other day in defending charter schools, which recently have been shown to lag behind their public-school counterparts in reading and math scores.

"It is wrong to think of charter schools as a monolith," Paige said. "There are schools for dropouts, schools for students who've been expelled, schools serving the most economically disadvantaged families. Charters are as diverse as the children they educate."

OK. But aren't all those things true of public schools, as well? Of course they are. So why doesn't the Bush administration cut them some slack under its "No Child Left Behind" legislation, then?

Indeed, doesn't "No Child Left Behind" punish public school districts for the very kind of diversity Paige says he values and is willing to make certain concessions for in the charter schools? Of course it does.

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On the whole your school can have high test scores, but if one demographic subgroup within your building - say special education students, or students who fall below a certain income level, or students with language barriers, or those from certain ethnic groups - doesn't see annual improvement, the whole school gets labeled a failure by the federal government and is tarnished and dealt with accordingly. In some cases that means the feds will help pay for tutoring. In others it means giving students the opportunity to transfer to another school, replacing staff, rewriting curriculum, even closing buildings.

So why not apply the same tough-love standards to charter schools, Dr. Paige? What's more, why would the U.S. Education Department bury this information, not even acknowledging its existence until some enterprising journalist who'd been tipped dug it up? Is this administration so wedded to ideology - privatization is best, the free market has all the answers to what ails public education - that the best interests of the kids in those charter schools come second? Have these guys become apologists for educational mediocrity or worse, too? Why the double standard?

Regarding "No Child," we're no longer talking about just the likes of Peoria Manual High School anymore, or others that serve largely impoverished populations. East Peoria and Pekin high schools fell out of Uncle Sam's good graces this year, too. Not only that, but some affluent, well-regarded Chicago suburban schools also ended up on the wrong side of "No Child," those with Hinsdale, Highland Park, Oak Park, Evanston, Lombard and Lyons Township in front of their names.

"The more subgroups you have, the more likely you are to not make (the testing goals)," said one suburban superintendent whose school is 66 percent white, 27 percent black and 4 percent Latino. Said another: "You're sending a letter home, in most cases, to parents whose children are having a wonderful experience, and then you get this letter that there is something profoundly wrong with their child's district." Some researchers believe it will be only the rarest school that won't be dubbed a failure eventually under "No Child," which calls for eliminating all achievement gaps by the year 2014, or else.

No wonder some states are going out of their way to find loopholes in the law - by setting their standards so low that no schools fail, for example - or are considering opting out of "No Child" and telling Uncle Sam he can keep his money. State's rights, you know. Funny thing is, many of the politicians who embraced "No Child" are all too willing to "focus on the family" in just about every area of American life but public education. They're kidding themselves.

"No Child Left Behind" - along with all the rhetoric about the "soft bigotry of low expectations" - is admirable in theory. It's unreasonable in practice, as we're starting to see.